by Benyamin Cirlin, delivered at Minyan M'at

Gut shabbes, shabbat shalom. And so, after spending three weeks intensely involved with beginnings, we arrive once again at the Beginning. The real Beginning. Could it be that Master of the Universe is jealous of all the time we His creatures have spent on renewal, that He too wants to begin again, that He too needs Breishit as much as we do? Living with the Jewish people through five books of toil and turmoil is no easy job, even for Ribon Kol Olamim.

I experienced a deep sense of comfort listening to Livi leyn the story of creation on Simchas Torah. It feels so good to return to the familiar. Coming home to Breishit is akin to reconnecting with an adored life long friend after an extended absence. This friend makes no demands, finds no fault, and stirs no anxiety, but offers only presence and calm. When I am with my friend, I am safe. When we are together, the world makes sense. We sit together, in the midst of the Garden, and we are free to reminisce, and to dream with no fear of being betrayed by our dreams. Sadly, however, the visit is abruptly cut short, and our time together remains a deeply cherished and unforgettable memory.

God seduces us with the first chapter of Breishit and wins us over with His alluring presentation of order and harmony. How else could He get he get us to keep reading the book, for the Torah, whose paths are paths of pleasantness, all to soon introduces us to a world saturated with unpleasantness. When Rashi writes that Breishit comes to teach that we Jews rightly have a claim to the land of Israel because the Landlord of the earth deeded it to us, he is a thousand years away from the reality of Jewish sovereignty in and. Is he not truly teaching, that despite massive evidence to the contrary, it is not crazy to be hopeful as long as one can intone the words, bereishit bara Elohim?

There is an astounding Midrash in Masechet Sanhedrin:

Rabbi Yochanan the son of Chanina said: The sixth day consisted of twelve hours. In the first hour Adam’s dust was gathered. In the second, it was kneaded into a shapeless mass. In the third, his limbs were shaped. In the fourth, a soul was infused into him. In the fifth, he arose and stood on his feet. In the sixth, he gave the animals their names. In the seventh, Chava became his mate. In the eighth, they ascended to bed as two and descended as four. In the ninth, he was commanded not to eat of the tree. In the tenth, he sinned. In the eleventh he was tried. And in the twelfth, he was expelled and departed.

Only twelve hours! Adam has consciousness for just eight hours, and only spends six hours together with Chava, four of which are complicated by the drama of sin and punishment. But can you imagine how great those two initial hours must have been, two hours that practically sustain a lifetime?

Our lives move with great rapidity, and our stay in the Garden is all too brief. Our relationships with God and fellow humans are breached by lack of integrity and honesty, and by the insidious presence of deception and fear. Those ways of being do not grow well in the Garden, and we are expelled much too speedily into an anxiety filled world of thorny questions and dilemmas.

It is clear to me however that the movement from the Garden to exile is not a one time event, but rather an ongoing dynamic between having and losing. We move in and out of the Garden countless times throughout our lives as we experience those two poles of being. Residing in Eden is the experience of having, being attached to a person, an idea, a belief, and feeling secure in that connection so that that it is safe enough to believe in the future. Being East of Eden, on the outside, is the experience of living in a world in which loss deprives us of a sense of meaning because cherished assumptions ring hollow and vacuous. And so, we dream, we build our lives on core assumptions, those assumptions shatter, and we struggle to dream anew. When our assumptions match our life circumstances, we are in the Garden. When our assumptions fail to match our reality, we are forced to the outside.

Listen to the words of Breishit Rabbah on the verse, “The tree of life in the midst of the Garden:”

It was taught: It was a tree that spread over all living things. Rabbi Judah the son of Rabbi Ilai said: The tree of life covered a five hundred years journey, and all the primeval waters branched out in streams under it. Not only its branches but even its trunk was a five hundred years journey.

Living in the Garden is not so much about the experience of perfection and absence of problems as it is about experiencing a kind of protection that leads one to feel rooted. Each time my life circumstances and choices bring a sense of meaning and purpose, I stand protected beneath the Tree of Life. Under the canopy of the Tree it feels safe to be expansive, to move about in any direction because the world is open. Wherever I go, the Tree is there with me, and so too is the Planter of the Tree. Dread inspiring thoughts of death and mortality reside a five hundred years journey away from the center of consciousness because I am covered by life and my assumptions take root.

We remain in that place until loss, great or small, sends us into exile, where we are forced to till an inhospitable soil. On the outside, we are forced to relearn our worlds, to reconfigure our relationships with ourselves, our surroundings, our fellow survivors, space and time, and with God. We are forced to learn how to become truly hopeful once again. The fruits of our efforts lead us back to the Garden where we rediscover that it is possible to become intimate once again without the overwhelming fear of being crushed by our own vulnerability.

It seems to me that we as a community make that journey back to the Garden on Simchas Torah in a manner unlike any other day in the year. The circle of our dancing creates the outer edge of the Garden, and in the center stands the Tree of Life. This Tree of Life is dynamic, for it rests not in one place, but moves to and fro, touching and healing those who dance around it. It is a generous Tree, allowing whoever wishes to grasp it, to cling to it. As the dancing progresses, the branches of the Tree grow fuller and lusher. Under the sheltering presence of the Tree, my life assumptions and principles become ever more clear, namely, the Torah needs to be at the center of my life. Clinging to the Torah allows me to be hopeful in a world full of mystery and pain. Under the Tree I gain the clarity that all of my neurotic behaviors and personal shticklach are for naught; they are weeds that keep me from understanding that at its core, the Torah is about love of God and fellow humans.

We are a group of people, like all other groups, full of good and bad qualities, capable of both great acts of chesed and friendship, and also destructive thoughts and deeds of jealousy, rancor and vicious negative judgment. Yet somehow, dancing with the Torah, hand-clasping hand, mouths full of song, we find ourselves once again protected by the pleasant shade of the Tree. This Garden is not a place of perfection: the judgments and differences remain, but our footsteps stamp them down to a manageable size as we are protected by our knowledge that Yisrael veOraita veKoodsha brichhoo chad hoo – the Jewish people and Torah and God are one. On Simchas Torah we are not afraid to sing out that truth that too often remains muffled, victim of a sometimes near-lethal combination of legitimate doubt, over valued rationality, and fear of condemnation. But on Simchas Torah we sing it out, unashamed and unafraid, and in those five to six hours we spend together under the Tree we become the kahal kadosh we are capable of becoming.

And so, here we are today, Shabbes Mevarchim, on the cusp of Marchesvan. The memory of our sojourn in the Garden on Simchas Torah is fresh, yet here we sit, on the outside. The question arises for me, how do we keep alive the fervor and passion, the sense of safety that leads to creativity and exploration, the flowing of those primeval waters?

Listen to Louis Ginzburg’s rendition of the Midrash on Adam’s leaving the Garden:

Seeing that he would be banished, Adam began to weep again and implored the angels to grant him at least permission to take sweet scented spices with him out of Paradise, that he might be able to bring offerings unto God, that outside too, his prayers might be accepted before the Lord. The angels implored the Lord on Adam’s behalf, and He heard their prayer. Adam gathered saffron, nard, calamus, and cinnamon, and all sorts of seeds besides for his sustenance. Laden with these, Adam and Eve left Paradise, and came upon the earth.

Adam knows that he can’t remain in the Garden, but he refuses to leave without taking a piece of Paradise with him. Not an object of Paradise, but a scent of paradise, a seed of Paradise. Adam is not afraid to beg for a living memory of the Garden.

What strikes me here is that it is so clear to Adam that he can’t live on the outside without that scent. That smell from the Garden obviously is not palpable, but it has the capacity to transport us back to the very beginning to the source of the living breath. As my wife Miriam perceptively pointed out to me, holy reyach is just a small “yood” away from rooach. What will it take for us as a community to truly develop a new Torah of yearning in which we refuse to move forward without at least a fragrance from the Garden? We are almost one month away from Rosh Hashanah and one week away from Simchas Torah. Are the dreams you dreamed for yourself and this community on those days still alive, or like me, have they already dissipated, weakened to some extent? Tomorrow is the first truly open Sunday in a month, and I thank God for that, for my bike and tennis racket need to be dusted off. But I wonder, as I face this open world, is there some way for me to bring the Torah along on that long awaited bike ride?

This minyan, like many of us here today, is middle aged. We have witnessed and participated in many cycles of hope and disappointment, many painful losses, many rounds of achievement and disillusionment. To be middle aged is in part to have a very clear and detailed picture of unrealized aspirations, both personal and communal, and thus the present becomes fraught with complication and doubt. In truth it is so easy to give up. And so, to be middle aged and to yearn for a cherished past, disconnected from the present, is easy. To be middle aged and to yearn for something deeper and more alive in the living present is a much trickier proposition, for it is so easy and comfortable to remain cynical.

My hope and blessing on this Shabbes Breishit is that we as individuals and as a community can face the risk of truly yearning for a year in which the Torah is at our center, and in which even the most minute scent of Gan Eden is never too far away. Shabbat Shalom.

copyright reserved by the author